Latest news with #NicholasReed
Vox
14-05-2025
- Vox
This life-changing piece of health tech is getting cheaper — and more advanced
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. Vox/Getty Images Hearing aids, like canes or orthopedic shoes, are something you don't think about a lot when you're young. But maybe you should. You probably either know someone who needs hearing aids, or you'll need them some day yourself. About 30 million people in the United States, aged 12 and older, have hearing loss in both ears, and about two-thirds of people end up with hearing loss, which can range from mild to severe, by their 70s. But talking to your parents or grandparents about getting hearing aids can be tough — I've done it. They might not like the idea of sticking things in their ear canals or confronting the difficult realities of aging and health. They surely shy away from the price tag of hearing aids, which can cost thousands of dollars and are not covered by insurance or Medicare. But plugging tiny and exorbitantly expensive speakers into your ears isn't the only way. Your mom might already own hearing aids without even knowing it. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic. In April, a company called Nuance started selling glasses that double as hearing aids thanks to microphones and beam-forming speakers built into the frame. Although at $1,200, they're not cheap, they cost far less than a pair of prescription hearing aids, which tend to range from $2,000 to $7,000. Hearing aids have never been more accessible — or futuristic. You can also buy something that's legally considered a personal sound amplification product (PSAP), which is not designed to treat hearing loss but does make things louder. Some of them can play music and handle phone calls too. In the age when earbuds are ubiquitous, these devices appeal to all ages. 'It's good that we're seeing people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, talking about it, because it's totally changing the paradigm for them of engaging in hearing care earlier,' Nicholas Reed, a faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, told me. I'm a millennial, but I've also dealt with hearing loss my entire life. A bad stretch of childhood ear infections left me mostly deaf in one ear and pretty spotty in the other. I learned to read lips as a teenager and avoid conversations at loud parties in college. Some surgery in my 20s brought me closer to normal, but I could still use a little help. Related The surprising thing I learned from quitting Spotify I've spent the past few weeks trying out the Nuance glasses in various settings. They're remarkable, not only because they feel almost indistinguishable from my regular glasses but also because I forget they're hearing aids. Made by EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and dozens of other glasses brands, the Nuance glasses employ some of the same technology that the Ray-Ban Meta glasses use to play music and help you talk to AI. And while the Nuance glasses don't currently offer the option to stream audio, they do help you hear what your friend is saying in a loud bar. The AirPods Pro 2, which retail for $250, work equally as well. After Apple announced last fall that a software update would unlock an accessibility setting — it's appropriately called Hearing Aid — I started using it all the time, toggling between listening to podcasts to ordering cold brew in a crowded coffee shop. In instances where I may have needed to ask people to repeat themselves in the past, I hear them fine the first time. I just have to wear AirPods all the time, which makes the glasses solution even more appealing. For most people, hearing loss typically starts in your 50s and gains momentum in your early retirement years. If you've ever been to a busy restaurant with your parents or grandparents, you know this can be alienating for the person left out and frustrating for the hearing person, too. The social isolation can lead to loneliness and anxiety, which can hasten cognitive decline and lower life expectancy. Nevertheless, neither traditional clinical hearing aids or the newer category of devices are easy fixes. Once you start wearing any sort of hearing aid, it takes time to adjust, and you might need help tweaking the sound as you get used to it. That's one reason why so many people avoid it — only one in five who need hearing aids actually have them. You can't put them in your ears and immediately have perfect hearing. Your brain adjusts over time, and so it may take weeks or months to adapt to the new frequencies hearing aids help you hear. Related How technology has inspired neuroscientists to reimagine the brain Still, it's a worthwhile project. 'Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long,' Reed said. 'It's something that's vital to your existence and how you connect with other people.' It's not clear how the latest hearing aid innovation will move the needle on adoption. Even though over-the-counter hearing aids have been available since 2022, when the FDA implemented new regulations for the devices, it's still an uphill battle to get people to wear them. 'Sensory input is so key to our existence, but we just sort of overlooked it for so long.' — Nicholas Reed, faculty member at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine 'We are not seeing large increases in hearing aid uptake since over-the-counter hearing aids have become available,' said Tricia Ashby, senior director of audiology practices at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA). 'And I have to say that mimics other countries who had over-the-counter hearing aids before the US did.' Given the fact that the older people who need them most are potentially less likely to try the latest technology, it might still take a few years for over-the-counter hearing aids to go mainstream. Given the precedent set by companies like Apple and Nuance, though, it's possible that more devices will add hearing assistive features to existing products. You can imagine a future where you wear earbuds that are the interface for your voice assistant as well as your lifeline on a loud plane. You might have glasses that project walking directions onto your field of view and help you hear which direction traffic's coming from when you have to cross the street. These kinds of features together only get more important as you get older and need a little more help. 'We are in an age now where you're thinking about optimizing aging, and how do you do it?' Reed said. 'And it's things like this.'
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Common aging symptom could worsen loneliness in seniors
Addressing hearing loss in the elderly could help alleviate the growing loneliness epidemic among senior citizens, according to a report from SWNS. A new study led by researchers at NYU Langone Health found that providing hearing aids and guidance on their use may help preserve vital social connections that often diminish with age, which could reduce feelings of isolation. Music Conductor With Parkinson's Sees Symptoms Improve With Deep Brain Stimulation The study, one of the largest of its kind, gathered data on older adults with untreated hearing loss from four states: Maryland, North Carolina, Minnesota and Mississippi. The researchers tracked two groups: one received hearing aids, counseling and personalized audiology support, while the other was provided with education on healthy aging, SWNS reported. To measure social isolation, the researchers evaluated the frequency of social interactions, the size and diversity of participants' networks, and the depth of their relationships. Read On The Fox News App Alzheimer's Rates Have Reached Staggering Number As Experts Call For Change Before the intervention, both groups reported similar levels of loneliness. Three years later, participants who received hearing care saw their loneliness scores improve slightly, while those who did not receive treatment reported worsening feelings of isolation, per SWNS. Those treated for hearing loss retained one additional social connection on average over a three-year period compared with those who received no hearing therapies and were instead educated about healthy aging. Click Here To Sign Up For Our Health Newsletter Participants given hearing aids were also found to have more diverse relationships with many different types of connections, such as family members, friends and acquaintances, as SWNS reported. They also maintained deeper, higher-quality bonds than those who were not treated for hearing loss. "Our findings add to evidence that helping aging patients hear better can also enrich their social lives and boost their mental and physical well-being," said Professor Nicholas Reed, the study's lead author from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Optimal Aging Institute, as reported by SWNS. Loneliness and hearing loss have both been linked to serious health concerns, including depression, heart disease and premature death, the expert noted. A previous 2023 report showed that hearing interventions may also slow cognitive decline among those at highest risk for dementia. Co-principal investigator Professor Josef Coresh added, "Making sure people can continue engaging with their family and friends as they age is a critical part of maintaining their quality of life." For more Health articles, visit The researchers plan to continue following the study participants for another three years, and will also aim to diversify the study group, they noted. "These results support efforts to incorporate hearing aid coverage into Medicare as a means of addressing the nation's social isolation epidemic, which is especially dangerous for the elderly," said Coresh, according to the article source: Common aging symptom could worsen loneliness in seniors
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Addressing Hearing Loss May Reduce Isolation Among the Elderly
NEW YORK, May 12, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Providing hearing aids and advice on their use may preserve social connections that often wane as we age, a new study shows. Its authors say that this approach could help ease the loneliness epidemic that older Americans face. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a quarter of seniors say they have little or no contact with others, and a third report feeling lonely. Experts have linked such isolation in part to hearing loss, which can interfere with communication and relationship building. The 2023 U.S. Surgeon General's Advisory named improving social connection as great a priority as targeting tobacco use, obesity, and addiction. Led by researchers at NYU Langone Health as part of the ACHIEVE clinical trial, the study revealed that those treated for hearing loss retained one additional social connection on average over a three-year period when compared with those who received no hearing therapies and were instead educated about healthy aging. Publishing online May 12 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, the work further showed that those given hearing aids had more diverse relationships, with networks that had many different types of connections (e.g., family members, friends, and acquaintances). They also maintained deeper, higher quality bonds than those who were not treated for hearing loss. "Our findings add to evidence that helping aging patients hear better can also enrich their social lives and boost their mental and physical well-being," said study lead author Nicholas Reed, AuD, PhD, a member of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine's Optimal Aging Institute. Experts have linked both loneliness and hearing loss to depression, heart disease, and early death, among other concerns, adds Reed, also a faculty member in the Departments of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Population Health at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. A 2023 report on the ACHIEVE trial showed that hearing interventions may slow cognitive decline among those at highest risk for dementia. "These results support efforts to incorporate hearing aid coverage into Medicare as a means of addressing the nation's social isolation epidemic, which is especially risky for the elderly," said ACHIEVE trial co-principal investigator Josef Coresh, MD, PhD. "Making sure Americans can continue engaging with their family and friends as they age is a critical part of maintaining their quality of life," added Coresh, also the Terry and Mel Karmazin Professor in the Department of Population Health. For the study, the research team collected data about older adults with untreated hearing loss across four sites in Maryland, North Carolina, Minnesota, and Mississippi. The study is among the largest to date to explore if hearing care can help prevent weakening of social networks, having included nearly 1,000 men and women ages 70 through 84. Half of the participants received hearing aids, counseling sessions and personalized instruction with an audiologist, and when needed, tools such as adaptors that connect hearing aids to televisions. The other half of the participants were given instruction about exercise, strategies for communicating with healthcare providers, and further resources for healthy aging. To measure social isolation, the researchers assessed how regularly participants spent time with others, the size and variety of their social networks and the roles they played in them, and the depth of their connections. Loneliness was calculated using a 20-question scoring system that evaluates how often a person feels disconnected from others. After the initial data was collected, the team followed up at six months and then every year for three years. Among the other findings, the study revealed that before treatment, participants in both groups reported feeling equally lonely. Three years after the intervention took place, loneliness scores slightly improved among those who had received hearing care, while scores slightly worsened among those who did not. Hearing aids and their related audiology appointments cost an average of $4,700, which is usually paid out of pocket, notes Coresh, who is the founding director of the Optimal Aging Institute. Also a professor in the Department of Medicine, Coresh says the authors plan to continue following the participants for another three years and to repeat the study with a more diverse group of people—the patients were mostly White. He cautions that the participants received concierge-level hearing care that provided more resources and time with audiologists than is typically offered to the public. Damaged hearing aids, for example, were replaced within days instead of weeks. Funding for the study was provided by National Institutes of Health grants R01AG055426, R01AG060502, U01HL096812, U01HL096814, U01HL096899, U01HL096902, and U01HL096917. In addition to Reed and Coresh, NYU Langone researcher James Pike, MBA, was involved in the study. Frank Lin, MD, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, is study senior author and the co-principal investigator of the ACHIEVE trial along with Coresh. Other study co-investigators are Jinyu Chen, MS; Alison Huang, PhD, MPH; Ziheng Chen, BS; Thomas Cudjoe, MD, MPH; Jennifer Deal, PhD, MHS; Christine Mitchell, ScM; Esther Oh, MD, PhD; and Jennifer Schrack, PhD, at Johns Hopkins University; Michelle Arnold, AuD, PhD; Theresa Chisolm, PhD; and Victoria Sanchez, AuD, PhD, at the University of South Florida in Tampa; Sheila Burgard, MS; David Couper, PhD; and Lisa Gravens-Mueller, MS, at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill; Adele Goman, PhD, at Edinburgh Napier University in the United Kingdom; Nancy Glynn, PhD, and Theresa Gmelin, MSW, MPH, at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania; Kathleen M. Hayden, PhD, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina; Thomas Mosley Jr, PhD, at the University of Mississippi in Jackson; and James Pankow, PhD, MPH, at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. About NYU Langone HealthNYU Langone Health is a fully integrated health system that consistently achieves the best patient outcomes through a rigorous focus on quality that has resulted in some of the lowest mortality rates in the nation. Vizient Inc. has ranked NYU Langone No. 1 out of 115 comprehensive academic medical centers across the nation for three years in a row, and U.S. News & World Report recently placed nine of its clinical specialties among the top five in the nation. NYU Langone offers a comprehensive range of medical services with one high standard of care across seven inpatient locations, its Perlmutter Cancer Center, and more than 320 outpatient locations in the New York area and Florida. With $14.2 billion in revenue this year, the system also includes two tuition-free medical schools, in Manhattan and on Long Island, and a vast research enterprise. Media Inquiries:Shira PolanPhone: David March (for May 12 only)Phone: View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE NYU Grossman School of Medicine and NYU Langone Health Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
